Set your heart

Oh, but time sure flies doesn’t it! I can hardly believe it’s been a month since my last post. I can tell you that I take comfort in hearing everyone else around me asking where the month of July went – not to mention how quickly 2015 itself is going by. Before I get into sharing what is on my heart today, I would like to ask you to do something for me please. Could you read the book of Colossians? Yes sis, the entire book. Its only 4 chapters long, but if you would allow God use it to minister to you, there is so much ‘meat’ to this short book of the Bible. You will find so much comfort and validation in Colossians. When God asked me to read it this morning, I pushed back a bit, telling Him that I had studied it a little earlier this year. But God always knows best doesn’t He? In response to His insistence, I read the entire book again and I can tell you that the things He ministered afresh to me so blessed me that I have purposed to read Colossians from start to finish on the first day of every new month, God helping me. I pray that as you purpose to meditate on this portion of Scripture, that God will reveal Himself afresh to you, and that He will reveal ‘You’ to you in a new and deeper way, in Jesus name, Amen.

I stumbled across Ezekiel 44 v 5 today. I say stumbled because with certainty I can say that I have read this scripture before several times as part of my study of the book of Ezekiel. Why it hit me the way it did today was subsequently made clear and this is what I want to share with you. Ezekiel 44 v 5 (AMP) reads “Set your heart to see with your eyes and hear with your ears all that I say to you….:

The words ‘Set your heart’ kept reverberating in my spirit. I thought about the human anatomy and what the biological linkages were between the heart, the eyes and the ears. I am not a doctor so I can’t readily say I see what that connection is, save for the intricate nerves and sensors that connect every part of our body to the brain. From an absolute layman perspective – devoid of any need for scientific research lol, I can tell you that the heart has no eyes and neither does it have ears. So when God’s Word is saying to set your heart to see with your eyes and hear with your ears what He is speaking, the biological and the physical have no place in gaining the right understanding. Not really!

I realized that this Scripture is connected to Proverbs 4 v 23 which tells us to “Guard our hearts with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life”. Simply put therefore, what we see and what we hear are conditioned by the state of our hearts. And sis, God is very particular about the state of our hearts. You know this right? He more than anyone else understands that once our hearts are wrongly positioned, we are compromised spiritually and all our perspectives will be out of alignment with the workings of His Holy Spirit.

It has been a trying few days for me. I was informed a couple of days ago that one of my former staff, a wonderful young man who served so diligently with us for several years, dropped dead as he went to brush his teeth that morning. Later that same day, one of my most valued staff came to inform me that he would be relocating to another country and as such would be putting in his resignation in a couple of months. I had said to him that much as I appreciated the constraints which led to his decision to relocate, I really didn’t need to hear the news that day as I was already weighed down with sadness over the death of my staff. What did I know sis? The avalanche was just beginning to unfurl.

Just yesterday I found myself at the funeral service of the first son of parents’ who was brutally murdered a few days ago by a young man he opened his home to in an act of simple love and kindness. The grief was almost too much for me, and I couldn’t help but wonder how his parents and siblings were able to go through watching his lifeless body being laid to rest. It was such a senseless death – viewed with the physical eyes of understanding and the things the physical ears heard from the time the news of his death broke. It helped for me to focus on the fact that God was not unaware this would happen and that He had His own purpose even in what appeared senseless to us, but it was really hard to let go of the heaviness in my heart.

This morning started for me with a call from a friend whose daughter’s marriage was crumbling. It was an intense and frustrating series of conversations that I had this morning with both mother and daughter. When the calls were all done, all I could do was sit quietly on my couch in silence, trying to get some rest back into my seriously disquieted spirit. My phone rang again though and this time it was a dear friend calling to inform me that a relative had died. She didn’t have children for the first twenty years of her marriage, and then they were blessed with twin boys. What manifested as a brief episode of pain which she went to hospital to check on turned out to be cancer. In no time, she was whisked into a surgery which she then didn’t survive. Later this same morning, I found out that another friend had lost her first son and the apple of her eye. I was still trying to deal with the reality of this when about an hour later, my husband called to inform me that we had lost the mother of my sister-in-law… the same sister-in-law who herself died early last year leaving four young children – including a new born baby behind.

Sis, can I tell you that I was so shattered by the onslaught of bad news that I could barely make the drive back home. Oh, but it was almost too much for me. Almost too much… but God reminded me ‘Set your heart, Audrey’. I realized quickly that unless I set my heart to see God in the middle of all this, I would only see pain/bad/evil and I would only hear the negative and despondent noises the world makes in this space. Unless I set my heart, I would give in to negativity and to doubt, and ultimately to fear. I wouldn’t be able to ‘see’ God and I certainly wouldn’t be able to ‘hear’ God. And sis, you and I know by now that unless we are fully connected to God and allow Him minister to us always, we cannot make it through the vicissitudes of this life, right?

‘Set you heart, Audrey’…. I did sis, and I have. By the power of the Holy Spirit, I will also be able to do this daily despite the magnitude and constancy of issues that life may throw at me. I have set my heart on the fact that God is good, even where situations and things don’t appear good. I have set my heart on the fact that God works all things out for our good, and that even where I don’t understand or even where it doesn’t seem like it, I know with all certainty that this word is true. My tears, my fears, my insecurities, my anxieties… they do not invalidate the word of God. So I set my heart on the fact that while my flesh may waver, my spirit is sure and rests fully in the goodness of my God in all things and through all things.

I set my heart on the fact that God has shown me His goodness in more ways than I can readily count or recall. I set my heart on the things He has spoken to me that He will do in me, with me, for me and through me. I set my heart on the things He has blessed me to see and to hear through the eyes and ears of the spirit. I set my heart on the truth of the fact that death is a part of life. Indeed we are all born to die, and no one can tell who goes when or why. I set my heart on the confidence that death has no hold over me because I am in Christ, and death is gain for all who are in Christ, painful as the physical loss may be on this side of eternity. I set my heart on God Who asked me to cast my cares upon Him because He does care for me. I set my heart on the God Who loves me with an everlasting love, a love that I cannot begin to comprehend the magnitude of no matter how I try.

Sis, I set my heart on God….and all I see is that He is on the throne and that by His grace I am one of His own. I set my heart on Him and the ears of my spirit only hear ‘Rest in Me, daughter. I am with you always’. I set my heart on God and all is well… no matter what!

I don’t know what your struggles are, sis. Praise God if you have none. If you are in a place though where it seems you are being buffeted by storms on all sides, set your heart aright sis, so that your eyes will see only God and your ears will hear only God. Looking at the physical can be scary and disheartening and focusing on the things your physical ears hear can downright drown you. So take your eyes off all that, sis. Set your heart to God and allow Him minister to you peace, assurance, grace, rest….and there is no better place to be than in the rest of God sis. No better place!

The Lord has surely helped me today and in this season, sis. He will always help. He is the one that says ‘I hear you. I always hear you. And I will answer you’. Trust Him with your heart this season and every day sis. He will help you, as surely as He is helping me.

Be blessed sis….. for you surely are!